Steve Doerschuk: Taking in as much as I can in Tampa

Wednesday

Jan 28, 2009 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2009 at 5:47 PM

My paper is paying good money to have me here, so I try to see a lot. The room at the media hotel is swell, but I hate it like a tomb, and I’m typing this from the fifth floor of a gigantic courtyard where I can watch writers going up and down in a see-through 20-story elevator.

Steve Doerschuk

My paper is paying good money to have me here, so I try to see a lot.

The room at the media hotel is swell, but I hate it like a tomb, and I’m typing this from the fifth floor of a gigantic courtyard where I can watch writers going up and down in a see-through 20-story elevator.

I take long walks at night. I know from Super Bowl experiences in six other towns that crowds get bigger and bigger as the week gets older. There is so much to see -- drunks, street preachers scolding them, whatever you might imagine in the way of people acting out what society defines as the main event.

I’m typing across the street from the Tampa Convention Center, having been around bunches and bunches of players after bus rides to and from the Steelers’ and Cardinals’ hotels.

With Super Bowl interviews, I always try to find players by themselves and talk about a little bit of everything.

You have to bee smart about it. You don’t spend the two hours trying to horn in more two questions to Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger. You wax rude, get in one question, then move on to chat up Terrelle Smith and Nick Eason.

I’m the other guy

The economy aches, but it’s a boom week for bus drivers.

One guess is that there’s one bus for every resident of Minerva here.

I rode one bus the size of North Industry on which the only passengers were Woody Paige, kind of a TV personality, and yours truly. The driver had no idea who Paige was, other than a guy who said he prefers Steak n’ Shake to fancy bistros.

The bus parked at one of the media events. Fans lined the ropes beyond which they were not to pass.

Paige gets off. Immediately, a roar goes up.

“WOODY!!!!!!!!!!” ... as if the ghost of Woody Hayes had appeared.

Hello, my name’s …

At media day, Eason, a backup Steelers lineman, got a huge kick out of being treated like a rock star. A dancing-with-the-stars type wanted him to dip her. A writer from Hawaii was thrilled to be granted an interview, afterward saying: “May I give you this as a small token of appreciation.”

It looked like a box of chocolates.

Forrest Gump said something about a box of chocolates that tends to apply to Super Bowl weeks: You never know what you’ll get.